"In the palace, in boudoirs, in the nurseries, he plays the prince--extortioner--executioner. To the public he is the benign lord, whining for paltry huzzas."
Frederick Augustus was so dumfounded, he could only grind his teeth.
I continued: "You prate of respect due the Majesty. There"s nothing to induce feelings of that sort. Round me there is naught but weakness, hypocrisy, pettiness. I see shame and thievery stalking side by side in these gilded halls--gilded for show, but pregnant with woe.
"Fie on you, Prince Royal, who allows his wife to be dogged by spies.
Thieves, paid by your father, steal my souvenirs; a burglar"s kit hidden in their clothes, they besiege my writing table. Jailers stand between me and my children.
"My children!
"Like a she-dog,[7] whose young were drowned, I cry for my babies--I, the Crown Princess of Saxony, who saved your family from dying out, a degenerate, depraved, demoralized, decadent race."
When I had said this and more I fell down and was seized by crying convulsions.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 7: Queens seem to like this unseemly comparison:
"Am I a kennel-dog in the estimation of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d of England?" cried Mary of Scots, when Queen Elizabeth refused her safe-conduct through England upon her departure from France (Summer 1561).]
CHAPTER LVI
I AM DETERMINED TO DO AS I PLEASE
I reject mother"s tearful reproaches--I beard Prince George in his lair despite whining chamberlains--I tell him what I think of him, and he becomes frightened--Threatens madhouse--"I dare you to steal my children"--I win my point--and the children--"Her Imperial Highness regrets"--Lots of forbidden literature--Precautions against intriguing Grand Mistress--The affair with Henry--was it a flower-covered pit to entrap me?--Castle Stolpen and some of its awful history.
DRESDEN, _November 5, 1901_.
Patience ceased to be a virtue. Tolerance would be a crime against myself. I am determined to do as I please in future. If it upsets the King"s, Prince George"s and the rest"s delicate digestion, so much the better.
The newspapers are hinting about my troubles with Prince George and the King. When I go driving or appear at the theatre, the public shows its sympathy in many ways. Sometimes I am acclaimed to the echo.
Mamma wrote me a tearful letter. She spent six hours in prayers for "sinful Louise" and sends me the fruits of her meditations: six pages of close script, advising me how to regain the King"s and Prince George"s favor.
Never before have I failed in outward respect to my mother, but this time I wrote to her: "Pray attend to your own affairs. Don"t meddle in mine which you are entirely unable to understand."
DRESDEN, _November 6, 1901_.
Bernhardt was sent to Sonnenstein. Whether he became insane at Nossen, or whether it is the family"s intention to drive him mad among the madmen of Sonnenstein, I don"t know, but it behooves me to be careful.
Sonnenstein has accommodation for both s.e.xes.
LOSCHWITZ, _November 15, 1901_.
I sent a letter to the King, asking him to have Loschwitz Castle prepared for my reception. His Majesty didn"t deign to answer, but Prince George commanded me in writing to stay at Dresden "under his watchful eye."
I immediately proceeded to his apartments in my morning undress, without hat, gloves or wrap. As I rushed through the anteroom, Adjutant von Metsch begged me with up-lifted hands not to force His Royal Highness"s door, Prince George being too ill to receive me, etc., etc. I paid no attention to his mournful whinings. At that moment I had courage enough to stock a regiment.
"So you won"t allow me to go to Loschwitz," I addressed George as I suddenly bobbed up at the side of his desk.
My father-in-law looked at me as if I were a spook, emerged from a locked closet.
"Who let you in?" he managed to say after a while.
"I didn"t come here to answer questions," I replied. "I came to announce that if you don"t let me go to Loschwitz, there will be a scandal that will resound all over Christendom and make you impossible in your own capital."
"Why do you want to leave Dresden?" he insisted.
"Because I want to be alone. Because I am tired of hateful faces.
Because I refuse to accept orders and insults from people that are beneath an Imperial Princess of Austria."
Prince George turned pale.
"Am I one of those beneath Your Imperial Highness?" he queried stupidly.
"Decidedly so."
A long pause. Then Prince George shouted: "To the devil with you. I don"t care whether you stay in Loschwitz, or Dresden, or on the Vogelwiese."
The Vogelwiese is an amus.e.m.e.nt park, respectable enough, but the word or name, as used by George, reeked with sinister and insulting meaning.
Trembling with rage, I replied: "Right royal language you royal Saxons use. From time to time, I suppose, you refresh your fish-wife vocabulary in the annals of Augustus the Physical Strong, than whom a more gross word-slinger did not walk the history of the eighteenth century."
I believe Prince George was frightened by my violence. a.s.suming a haughty tone he said formally: "Your Imperial Highness is at liberty to travel whenever you please, but you will be so good as to leave your children in Dresden."
I stepped up to the white-livered coward and hissed in his face: "Steal my children if you dare, and I will go to France, or Switzerland and ask a republican President to interfere for humanity"s sake."
"And--land yourself in an insane asylum," sneered George.
"An old trick of the Royal House of Saxony, I know," I shouted back.
"Bernhardt is saner than you, yet the King sent him to Sonnenstein. If such a crime had been perpetrated by one not a king, he would go to jail."
Prince George pointed a trembling finger towards the door. "Out with you!" he bawled hoa.r.s.ely. "Out!"
I stood my ground. "May I take my children? Yes or no?"
He rang the bell and repeated mechanically: "Out with you, out!"
I had another fit of crying convulsions. Doctors, maids and lackeys were summoned in numbers. They bedded me on the couch and six men-servants carried me to my apartments.